Adam&eve tries shoplifting for Harvey Nichols Rewards

Adam&eveDDB has set the bar pretty high for Harvey Nichols – a bag full of Grand Prix at Cannes last year for starters – but it keeps going, now with a CCTV spoof to launch the posh store chain’s Rewards app #Ilovefreebies.

They’ve all got them of course and Harvey Nicks is a bit behind the curve but not many agencies would have come up with the idea of store rewards as an alternative to shoplifting.

Not just that but it’s used footage of real shoplifters – faces blanked out – being pursued and captured by the store’s formidable security team. Production by the Layzell Brothers at Blink.

A&E has established a tone of voice for HN – ‘edgy but nice’ – just as it has done for its bigger retail client John Lewis. Now it has a third retailer in John Lewis Partnership’s Waitrose. Waitrose advertising has become somewhat becalmed recently – as has that of most of its rivals in the supermarket game (interlopers Aldi and Lidl being honourable exceptions). Maybe there’s a message in that for its rivals who chiefly turn out price/promotion efforts these days – apart from Christmas when everyone’s overdosed on such ads anyway.

It will be interesting to see if A&E can work its magic on Waitrose too – assuming Waitrose is in the market for such, of course.

About Stephen Foster

Stephen is a former editor of Marketing Week and London Evening Standard advertising columnist. He wrote City Republic for Brand Republic and is a partner in communications consultancy The Editorial Partnership.